Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Jafar Montazeri who was talking in an inauguration ceremony of his political and security deputy on Wednesday downplayed the rhetoric that had been waging by the Principlists in recent months; “the number of officials receiving inordinate salary bills is by no means drastic; a workgroup has been working on more than 1,600 officials, while we received different lists of putative government officials who would be indicted of at least tacitly having received the amounts,” he told reporters.
“Government officials are not irrevocably corrupt as the propaganda in the media and public anxiety would want to see; our examinations indicated that in the majority cases, a loophole in the law allowing such figures popularly called ‘galactic’ contributed to the salary scandal and the ensuing media hype; there has been a laxity in the legislative process which turned a blind eye at the possibilities of abuse,” said the prosecutor-general.
“The number of alleged government high-ranking officials however small, should not be tolerated in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a system which lay claim on being run according to holy Quran and Islamic principles,” Montazeri asserted.
He concluded by saying that there was much work to be done since the scope and the magnitude of salary scandal had been estimated to be high; “the staff however are busy working on the case seriously; we need to reexamine all legislations on this to come to a definitive result, and if possible, to return the squandered sum to the public treasury.”
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